Out Of
Forty-Eight Officers And Men, I Had Only Fifteen Who Could Be Called
Real Hitters; The Others Were Only Shooters.
The great difficulty was to instruct them in distances.
I frequently
took them away from camp and made them guess the distance in paces from
some particular object, such as a tree, or white-ant hill. Very few of
the men had the slightest idea of this important subject; but at the
commencement, even the officers were perfectly ignorant. At length, by
constant practice at the target, varying the range from 100 to 300
yards, about a third of the corps became fair shots, and these few were
tolerably good judges of distance up to 400 yards. The colonel, Abd-el-
Kader, became an excellent shot, as he was an officer who took great
interest in his profession. The remainder of the corps shot as well as
they could, and took great pains; but although they were considered
crack marksmen by the line-regiments, their reputation would have
suffered if their deficiencies had been exposed. At any rate, they were
very dangerous with such a weapon as the snider, when firing into masses
of the enemy.
I distinguished "The Forty" from the line regiment by a scarlet uniform;
this was a simple red flannel shirt, worn outside their Zouave trouser,
and secured by a belt, with ammunition-pouches, round the waist. This
uniform, with linen gaiters, and with a head-dress of the scarlet fez,
bound by a turban of cobalt blue, looked remarkably well.
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